Pills Anonymous
Basic Info
We of PILLS ANONYMOUS are men and women who no longer want to use prescription drugs to provide an illusion of pleasure or to over-medicate a perceived problem with pain or anxiety, with stress or exhaustion – with living life. We have hurt others and ourselves long enough; we now seek recovery and healing for our loved ones and ourselves.
We have found our way to this fellowship by many paths, only to find a common road on which we can proceed, one day at a time. Many of us have participated in other 12-step programs, often quite actively, and yet found ourselves still unable to function without the use and abuse of prescription drugs. Some of us have come to our first Pills Anonymous meetings bewildered when, despite no past history of addiction, our use of physician-prescribed medication has spiraled out of control, undermining our sanity and wreaking havoc on our lives. And while some of us started off abusing prescription drugs as just another form of “recreation,” many did at some time have legitimate, medically appropriate reasons for needing such prescriptions.
Although we have subjected ourselves to substances every bit as powerful as street drugs, our “dealers” — sometimes knowingly, often unwittingly — were physicians and pharmacists, so we have usually had to commit few, if any, crimes to obtain our “fix.” Insurance companies often paid for at least part of our abuse. Our illegitimate activities were usually limited to acts which illustrate our astounding capability for deceit, such as getting prescriptions from multiple doctors simultaneously, stealing medications from our friends’ and family’s medicine cabinets, and occasionally forging prescriptions. We memorized the contents of the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR) so that we could precisely describe symptoms that elicited the prescription we craved. And above all, we hid our pills and our conniving not only from those who know us but, by denial and delusion, from ourselves.
Our conclusion? We are not like other people. Prescription drug addiction is a disease which affects our body, our mind and our spirit in such a way that taking a single pill often results in an irresistible urge to take more, many more.
It is probably worth taking a moment, right up front, and explaining what we mean by “prescription drug addiction.” Those who have combined their experiences to create this book define prescription drug addiction as “the escalating use of a prescription drug combined with a complete inability to withdraw from the drug for any length of time, if at all, without the assistance of medical professionals and/or a 12-step program.” While often drug use increases beyond what a physician has recommended – which is when many of us start “scamming” doctors – the fact that a medical professional has sanctioned one’s current level of usage does not mean you’re not addicted.
Does that mean we can be addicted to something like antibiotics? We think not. We are talking about drugs that trigger the reaction described above. The primary prescription drugs that bring us to Pills Anonymous seem to fall into two categories: those prescribed for pain, and those prescribed for anxiety/stress.
Some of the most abused medications – but certainly not the only ones – include hydroquinone (brand name:Vicodin), alprazolam (brand name: Xanax) and codeine (e.g., often combined with acetomeniphen or aspirin in brands such as Tylenol #3). Some of our older members got hooked on amphetamines — “uppers” — back when physicians prescribed them freely for dieting, but had to go to the black market for their pills after the government and the medical community clamped down on such prescriptions.